Random Thoughts

January 8, 2010

With apologies to Thomas Sowell:

*I guess I forgot to apologize to Thomas Sowell the last few times I did one of these. Am I the only one who gets the joke? And is the joke funny enough to keep doing it? The mind boggles. Or at least Scrabbles.

*A cardinal rule of life that I keep breaking: Never go to Chinese buffets for dinner. It’s the same quality and quantity of food that you would get for lunch, but they charge you $2-3 more. It’s a scam, I tells you.

*So, Marvel started their Siege event this Wednesday, and I picked up the “let’s follow Ben Urich around” miniseries (since they always have a “let’s follow Ben Urich around” miniseries and it usually has an interesting perspective on the events). And they had a parody of Glenn Beck pouting, singing the praises to Norman Osborn.

This was a little disconcerting. But it got me thinking, would conservatives actually support Norman Osborn if they did not have the benefit of knowing what’s going on it that Brillo pad shaped head of his like the comic book readers would? Let us examine the facts, shall we:

Pros:

Since conservatives believe in absolutes and in redemption, one could make the argument that they would buy into Norman’s “I got better” facade.

Norman is heading up the international defense arm of the government and is sticking it to those terrorists who he is not secretly working with, so he is doing his job better than a typical government employee.

Norman does not care for Obama’s approval, betwixt the Air Force One incident in The Thunderbolts and not even bothering to answer Obama’s call once he starts his invasion plan of Asgard (which is currently residing in the Wasteland). That’s ballsy in a way that a conservative could admire.

He shot the Skrull Queen in the face.

Cons:

We distrust big government, and HAMMER represents big government in a big way. It’s large, it’s international, it’s secretive, it’s leadership is appointed. A conservative would be wary of any governmental entity that claims to have our best interests in heart without proof.

One could also argue that Osborn’s cultus personalitae was built a little too well. Outside of a couple of incidents (Hawkeye busting into a live news broadcast to rant about Osborn, Spider-Man Youtubing some human experimentation Osborn was working on), one never sees Osborn presented in a negative light in the media. A conservative distrusts the “mainstream” media. There would be a segment of the conservative/libertarian movement that would be questioning Osborn just because the media seems to be for him.

It would be nice to see what a conservative journalist would think about all this but, unfortunately, there is not one. Ben Urich represents Old (liberal) Media. Sally Floyd represents New (liberal) Media. He’s New York Times; she’s Huffington Post. One could argue that J.J. Jamenson could be conservative, but he’s more comic relief and stereotype than actual character. That’s why we get Glenn Beck parodies.

Slow Blogging

I apologize for my slow blogging lately. Conservatives like real jobs, and I am currently working 2 jobs, neither of which involves a lot of lazy computer time-wasting right now. Hopefully, I will get back to writing and updating daily once I get used to my current work load. Until then, please bear with me.